1. Technical Field
This invention relates in general to communications and, more particularly, to communicating and displaying information generated by a plurality of devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
In many applications, it is necessary to aggregate information from a large number of source devices, optionally process the information, and provide results to one or more destination devices. For example, in a hospital, a monitor at a nursing station displays the status of multiple inputs from multiple patient sensors.
The equipment needed to aggregate and display information in this manner generally requires a powerful processing device connected to the source devices. Such processing devices have several disadvantages: (1) they are expensive, (2) they are immobile and (3) they are generally not easy to update for new capabilities.
Mobility is often a very important capability. Using the example of the hospital monitoring station, it would be preferable that the hospital's nurses monitor their patients, rather than having a centralized monitoring station. However, cost and mobility make this solution unfeasible.
Therefore, a need has arisen for an improved method and apparatus for monitoring multiple source devices.